How millionaire love cheat MP at centre of stolen cat mystery took out £200k loan paid for by YOU

A millionaire Liberal ­Democrat MP used taxpayer-funded parliamentary expenses to prop up his business empire, it emerged yesterday.

Self-confessed philanderer John Hemming - whose wife appeared in court recently accused of stealing his mistress’s cat - took out a £200,000 mortgage to stem a ‘cash flow’ problem.

He used that mortgage on his London flat, which was financed courtesy of MPs’ controversial second home allowance, to pay off another loan on one of his ­business premises.

Mr Hemming, who earns £200,000 a year from running his business on
top of his £65,738 MP’s salary, then allowed his mistress, daughter and a
‘rota’ of post-graduate researchers to stay in the Covent Garden flat
free of charge.

Mistress: John Hemming, Lib Dem MP and Emily Cox

The MP for Yardley in Birmingham defended his
‘complicated’ mortgage arrangements, claiming they were
‘cost-effective’, agreed by ­parliamentary authorities and ‘entirely
within the rules’.

The serial adulterer bought the two-bedroom
flat in the heart of London’s theatre district in 1993 and paid off his
first mortgage on the property two weeks before first entering
Parliament in May 2005.

Seven months later he took out the
£200,000 second mortgage with Coutts, the Queen’s bankers, and from
January 2006 until January 2009 billed the taxpayers £825 a month to
cover the repayments.

The 50-year-old, who also owned another flat in Brixton, South
­London, also claimed back £1,541 for the mortgage arrangement,
valuation and legal fees, along with £1,395 for four sets of bedding and
a new bed.

Mr Hemming used the £200,000 cash raised on his
Covent Garden property to pay off another mortgage he had on a £600,000
detached property in Birmingham, which he purchased in 1999 and used as
business premises.

Three-storey Osmond House, close to the
Hemming marital home, is the registered address of the Birmingham
Liberal Democrat Group and is used by the party for meetings.

The
MP’s agent Neil Eustace and Mr Hemming’s mistress Emily Cox – employed
by one of the MP’s companies as his personal assistant and the mother of
his fourth child – both work from Osmond House.

Miss Cox, 35,
previously lived in a top-floor flat in the building but last December
Mr Hemming bought his mistress a £200,000 residence five miles from his
marital home.

Mr Hemming says he stopped claiming second home
expenses for the Covent Garden flat in early 2009 ‘as a measure to
reduce the deficit (aka save the taxpayer money)’.

He insisted
yesterday: ‘There’s nothing unethical about what I have done.

‘It
was cost-effective, because the alternative was for me to sell my
Covent Garden flat to free up capital to pay the Birmingham mortgage and
move into rented accommodation in London, which would have cost the
public more.

Christine Hemming with her own cat is due to face court over the alleged break in of John Hemming's mistress' flat and theft of her cat - 'Beauty'

'The only other option was to sell up and buy
another flat, which again would have cost the taxpayer more.

‘This
wasn’t the best deal for me – either of the alternatives would have
served me better – but I was acting with the public in mind.’

Asked
if his mistress had stayed at the apartment, Mr Hemming replied: ‘Of
course. It’s hardly a shock for an MP’s mistress to spend the night in
his bed.’

He confirmed that his daughter, Marion Hemming, 20,
occasionally stayed on his couch while visiting him in London.

For
a period of time, he said his team of four researchers, based in
Birmingham, each spent a week at a time each in London, on a rota basis,
and would also stay at the property.

Mr Hemming’s total
parliamentary expenses bill for 2005/6 was £111,265, for 2006/7 it was
£134,220, for 2007/8 it was £149,288 and he claimed £111,265 in 2008/9.

The wife, the mistress and the missing cat

John Hemming: No case to answer

By Michael Seamark

He’s not the only MP to ­commit adultery or father a child with his mistress.

But John Hemming can probably claim to be the first to have voted for himself in a newspaper’s Love Rat of the Year contest, as he did in 2005.

The millionaire Liberal ­Democrat’s personal life is ­tangled, to say the least.

When news of her husband’s relationship with his former PA Emily Cox first emerged in 2005, the MP’s wife Christine described the affair as ‘about number 26’ in his list of infidelities yet vowed to stand by him.

In 2006 she even backed him in a failed attempt at becoming Lib Dem leader following the resignation of Charles Kennedy.

Even by these standards, the story took a bizarre twist last month with his wife facing court accused of stealing his mistress’s cat.

Mrs Hemming, 50, appeared briefly before Birmingham magistrates accused of burglary and theft of ‘a tabby kitten to the value of £20’.

She was granted bail until December when the case of the missing tabby, named Beauty, is due to be committed to crown court.

The Lib Dem MP for Yardley in Birmingham has three children with his wife, and a daughter with his 35-year-old lover, who lives near his marital home in the city. Asked recently which of the women he was actually living with, Mr Hemming replied: ‘That’s an interesting question and one I won’t be drawn on.’

But it appears the MP’s wife may finally have had enough of the bizarre situation.

At the time of her court appearance three weeks ago – during the case of the stolen cat – she said Mr Hemming was still living with her at their eight-bedroom marital home but she was now looking for a formal separation.

Mr Hemming yesterday confirmed that his days of living in two places maintaining two relationships might be over, saying he has now moved out of the family home.

The Oxford graduate, a former deputy leader of Birmingham City Council, won his marginal seat from Labour in May 2005 but has made a fortune outside politics as founder of JHC, a company which provides IT ­systems to the financial services industry.

In the current MP’s Register of Members’ Interests, Mr Hemming lists ‘two flats in ­London, from one of which rental income is received, a house and office building in ­Birmingham, from which

rental income is received, farmland and woodland in Devon, from which rental income is received’.